4.12.00
Gen. Kennedy's Anita Hill Problem

4.10.00
Let's Make A Deal

4.07.00
The Elián Precedent

4.06.00
A Scandalous Flip-Flop

3.31.00
The Other Gender Gap

3.29.00
The Blair Witch Project

3.24.00
House Chaplain Fight: Republicans 1, Lions 0

3.17.00
The Losers of 2000

t. General Claudia Kennedy, the Army's top-ranking female officer, filed a sexual-harassment complaint last fall against a fellow general whom she accuses of groping her in 1996. It appears to be a classic “He says, she says” case, with the accused claiming that he just gave a friendly embrace to an old friend and neighbor from an earlier posting.

According to reports, Gen. Kennedy wasn’t inclined to lodge a complaint until her alleged groper was tapped as the Army’s deputy inspector general, with responsibility for investigating sexual-harassment charges. So, a well-educated, professional woman is victimized by a colleague, but objects only years later when he is slated for a promotion. Anita Hill comes to mind, and, like her predecessor, Gen. Kennedy apparently didn't want to file a formal complaint, preferring to knife her fellow general’s career late and quietly.

If the behavior was egregious enough to warrant denying the accused a promotion now, then it warranted a timely, formal complaint in 1996. Men in the military shouldn’t be subject to informal, stale, career-killing accusations; and women in uniform too confused or too timid to lodge a prompt complaint shouldn't be counted on to face an armed enemy.

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